Sen. Mike Lee, a former constitutional lawyer, tells Newsmax that President Obama is guilty of “usurpations of power” that could place individual liberties “in grave jeopardy.”
The Utah Republican charges that Obama is “thumbing his nose” at the Constitution with various actions, including the recess appointments he made earlier this year.
He also says he found the administration’s initial statements on the embassy attack in Egypt “offensive,” and asserts that the United States should re-evaluate operating embassies in some troubled nations.
Sen. Lee clerked for Samuel Alito when he was an appeals court judge, and again when Alito was elevated to the Supreme Court. His father, Rex Lee, served as solicitor general in the first Ronald Reagan administration, representing the United States before the Supreme Court.
Lee was elected in 2010, ousting three-term Republican Bob Bennett with support from the tea party, and at 41 is the youngest member of the Senate.
Watch our exclusive interview. Story continues below.
Lee, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, testified on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee probing the Obama administration’s possible abuses of power.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV on Thursday, he says: “One of the things that I discussed in this Judiciary Committee over in the House of Representatives is the fact that the president made four unconstitutional recess appointments on January 4, 2012.
“He did this at a time when the Senate, according to its own rules, was not in recess. No other president, according to my research, has ever attempted this and this was usurpation of presidential authority at the expense of the powers of Congress, at the expense of the power that belongs to the people and is assigned to the United States Senate by the Constitution.
“Another topic I discussed was the president’s immigration executive order effectively implementing key provisions of the Dream Act, even though the Dream Act was rejected by Congress. This contravenes federal policy, established federal immigration policy as embodied in federal statute, and yet he purported to do this by executive order. This is a problem.”
Lee says he wouldn’t go so far as to say that Obama is “shredding” the Constitution, but he does say “he’s thumbing his nose at it and he’s placing important separation of powers protections in grave jeopardy by doing these things.
“Our Founding Fathers, 225 years ago, put together this document that kept in mind the fact that government power is often abused, and this risk of abusive power is often at its height with an executive and so that’s why we put a lot of constraints on presidential power in the Constitution.
“The more he’s willing to overlook that, the more individual liberty and prosperity is placed in grave jeopardy,” he added.
Asked if legal action can be taken to hold Obama accountable for the alleged abuses of power, Lee responds: “Yes, legal action can be taken, lawsuits can be brought, and in many instances they have been brought.
“One of the problems with lawsuits is that they can take months, usually years, to resolve. So this president may well be out of power by the time any such lawsuits are complete. In addition to that, not every court in every instance can exercise jurisdiction to review a presidential action.
“That leaves Congress, in many respects, to act on its own to hold hearings and bring public attention to these matters — in some cases, to withhold funding for certain federal programs in response to presidential usurpations of power.
“In the case of the Senate, the Senate can refuse to approve certain executive branch or judicial branch nominees appointed by the president," Lee added. "There are a number of things Congress can do in response to what the president does, but in the meantime, a lot of these things continue to happen. That’s why it’s very important that we have a presidential election every four years.”
As for what kind of precedent Obama is setting, Lee says the president is “setting a dangerous one to the extent that these practices are followed.
“Generally, what we have seen in recent decades is that the executive has acquired more and more power at the expense of the people’s representatives in Congress, and that’s why I maintain that this is an issue that is neither Democratic nor Republican. It’s neither liberal nor conservative. It’s simply American.
"Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress should be concerned about this and should be doing something about it because the liberty and the prosperity of the people is at stake.”
Turning to the ongoing attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East and North Africa that have claimed American lives, Lee says he is concerned about the increased boldness of Islamists there.
“This is cause for great sadness among Americans and our thoughts and prayers are with those who lost their lives in the recent attacks, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure more lives aren’t lost,” he tells Newsmax.
“As to what is the cause for this, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly, and it may take us a few days to learn more so we can figure out what happened. But this is scary and it’s cause for us to be alarmed about what’s happening in the Middle East generally."
He said he believes the time has come for the United States to "re-evaluate some of our spending priorities and to what extent it makes sense to maintain an embassy in a place like Libya where the government isn’t strong enough to prevent this kind of violence from erupting spontaneously.”
Asked if we need to shut down some of our embassies abroad, Lee responds: “I think our presence in Libya demonstrated that this one is not going to be sustainable right now.
“I’d love to see us have an embassy there that’s functioning, but that’s not going to happen until we get a functioning government in Libya, one that condemns these acts of violence and commits to us that they’re willing to go after those responsibility for these attacks and bring them to justice.”
The Obama administration is looking into the attack in Libya as a possible act of terrorism. But the president initially responded to the attack in Cairo with what Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said was “akin to apology” to Egyptian protesters for American values.
“It certainly does seem like a terrorist attack to me and there are a lot of hallmarks of terrorist attack so I’m perplexed by the president’s statements and frankly I find them kind of offensive,” Lee says.
“The president will have to speak for himself but I can’t in good conscience give any credence to that suggestion that it’s not a terrorist act.”
A White House calendar shows there is no public record of President Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing in the week leading up to the attacks in Egypt and Libya.
Lee comments: “I don’t know enough about what those briefings might have included to be able to tell you with confidence whether or not [the attacks] could’ve been forestalled. It certainly seems to me that it could be possible. And I hope the president will offer us an explanation as to why these briefings didn’t occur and to whether tragedy might’ve been avoided had the briefing occurred.
“I think the public is already demanding an explanation and the political forces being what they are will lead the president to offer up something. I assume that will be happening very soon.”
Lee was also asked if he is concerned that President Obama chose to campaign in Las Vegas on Wednesday night barely 24 hours after the American ambassador to Libya was killed.
“I’m sure some people find that distressing,” he says.
“I can’t speak for the president nor can I dictate what his campaign calendar might look like. He’s going to have to make those decisions on his own and he’s going to have to be prepared to defend those decisions on his own.
“He is a busy man and he’s got a tight schedule, yet at the same time he’s got to be sensitive to crises like these that erupt and some of the sensitivities that accompany them.”
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